Game Review - Nightingale

First Impressions Game Review: Nightingale Early Access by Inflexion Games

Score: +2/-14 FAIL

UPDATE (Apr-5): As of the 0.1.3 update, Nightingale is a FAIL. Just this one change -- without careful consultation such as a survey -- demonstrates how divorced from common sense and making a fun game Inflexion is.

Using the same material type across multiple slots no longer applies the bonus from that material type multiple times. E.g., Using Iron for a gun's barrel and action does not double the benefit of using iron.

• If they wanted to limit or prevent the stat-stacking exploit, they could have simply not reintroduced the Reclaim Ingots recipe and just let the exploiters whine.
• If they simply wanted to reduce the power of gear, they could have just nerfed it across the board by reducing the base power of each recipe. More likely though they wanted to add relevance to all the different types of materials available.
• Yes, the game had literally dozens of basically useless materials because players progressed too quickly to access better versions. But the answer was definitely not to make crafting more complicated and less fun. The answer to that is really to re-examine progression in their game, and possibly redistribute the availability of materials. Or just leave it alone and move on.

The quality of decision-making at Inflexion is, to put it kindly, highly suspect. In 0.2.0 they will mostly revert this change to something else, but again without survey to carefully discern if this is the right course and still without really addressing the underlying situations that led to a lack of diversity in the use of materials. This feels like desperate grasping at straws trying to quickly make relevant badly designed fundamentals.

*

"Nightingale is a first-person, PVE, open-world survival crafting game played solo or cooperatively with friends. Build, craft, fight and explore as you venture through mystical portals into a variety of amazing and fantastical realms."

Nightingale released this week and despite "Mixed" reviews on Steam, it still has a respectable player base at least in this launch week. As with so many games nowadays, it was hyped with such claims as "ex-Bioware devs" but still hides behind "Early Access" to excuse its shortcomings.

The key thing to know is that it really plays more like an Action RPG than a survival game. The survival aspects are quite once-and-done in comparison to many other survival games.

Unacceptable connection issues (mostly resolved)

• -0 UPDATE (Mar-14): With the 0.1.1b update, connection issues are significantly improved whereas previously multiple connection failures in a row were the norm. We have therefore revised our score to remove the penalty here. The game is no longer an instant fail. Previously...
• They are working on this of course, but they had a stress test before launch to avoid major issues. Instead their stress test was less than a day and many people didn't even get the chance to download the game before the test was over. Little wonder they launched to severe issues.
• Unacceptably long to load a solo private game world, and even then sometimes it takes multiple attempts due to loss of server connection. The status can say it's "Preparing world" or even "All is Ready" but then flip back to "Waiting for Server".
• Even if the status doesn't revert to "Waiting for Server", just loading the game world feels unacceptably long especially when you are the only one in it. MMORPGs with busier worlds and hundreds of players load faster than your personal realm in Nightingale.
• Every time you change Realms by walking through a portal, you risk losing connection or worse, "login failed" and you basically have to exit the application and restart.
• For example, it took four tries to return from one Realm to my Respite Realm. By this I mean:
• Enter a gate or initiate a travel, and get kicked out due to lost connection.
• Try several times to get back into the game - multiple "network errors" or "could not connect to servers"
• Finally re-enter the game. Attempt Realm travel again. And lose connection again...
• -1 Still takes a very long time to load into any Realm, even if you are the only person there.
• An Offline Mode would probably have helped with connection issues a lot, but the developers had wanted a basically multiplayer world, one which was lore friendly to the backstory of Nightingale, which has refugees from Earth basically running into each other as they Realm-hopped about.

-1 Character creation is terrible

• Faces are too stylized and look more like caricatures.
• Although there are a bunch of sliders for the face and some interesting options like having your choice of false teeth, it's really hard to make a decent looking face.
• There's only two fixed body types with no customization -- "A" (male) and "B" (female). It's not even clear why they bother to call them A and B when switching them changes the face preset selection between male and female.
• -1 Character bodies look weird. If you take body type B for example, you'll notice a thin, lanky, body and really long neck. If you want breasts to be recognized as female you'll have to also be skinny like a stick insect.
• Hair is also terrible when you look close-up. It's amazingly coarse-looking.

-1 Tech tree is quest locked

• This is pretty weird for a survival game where what you can build is determined not only by the merchants who can sell you the blueprints but the ability to find certain resources. These resources and blueprints simply are not available until you finish the lengthy "tutorial".
• Unlike many other survival games, there is a very lengthy tutorial process you need to get past.
• Nevertheless the devs had hoped players would get together for raids against world bosses, but it's hard to reconcile the survival-game gearing process with this. Theoretically players can short-cut the process by getting invited by more established characters and having access to their Realms and crafting stations and NPC merchants, but that short-cutting is counter to the survival game genre.

-1 Higher difficulty is not rewarding and basically pointless.

• In fact it feels you are regularly punished for playing on higher difficulty and doing more than the minimum following the quest prompts.
• For example, there is a quest to get Tier 1 parts from desert automatons. The quest will not accept higher-tier parts. But if you entered that Realm on Hard or Extreme difficulty, all the monsters are Tier 2 and drop Tier 2 parts. So you actually have to backtrack and open a lower-difficulty Realm in order to get the parts you need.

-1 Exploration is severely lacking.

• What you do at points of interest are basically the same in a small pool of types.
• The locations are so template that you start to see the identical buildings so often. But there is so much procedural generation can really do and Nightingale is no different here from many other games that have tried it before.
• Some of them are so trivial it is almost insulting, especially the three-tone repeat-the-sound-sequence puzzles.
• As you advance through different types of realms, you start to see different landmarks, but they are basically cosmetic. Nothing different happens there.
• Until the current endgame at the Watch, it feels pointless to continue exploring POIs because of the boring repetition and you only need so much currency before you've bought everything from the traders.
• You get so much of the currency from Apex Vaults at The Watch, by zerging along with a bunch of other players or just getting carried by them; and all the endgame gear recipes are at The Watch.
• Exploring POIs can teach you some recipes, but this seems quite limited, and mostly it is not that important. It would be nice if you could learn much more, but you don't, not even furnishings for your home like different chairs, tables, and decorations.

-1 First stage endgame is boring

• You basically reach it when you finally get to The Watch, where you can enter public "vaults" (basically drop-in group dungeons).
• Except these "Apex Vaults" are basically like what you have already encountered solo on various Realms, just scaled up larger for more players and with a big monster at the end.
• Nothing you haven't seen before, really. The stages in these vaults are also the type of puzzles / challenges that you've been playing since your very first home Realm.

-1 Some things are simply bizarre. These is not an "early access" issues but common sense design issues.

• In order to grill fish at a campfire you need to mount a stuffed fish trophy nearby. I guess you won't be able to grill fish outdoors then.
• To grill something nicely, might you not, maybe use a grill?
• In order to make certain pieces of clothing you need a tea set near your sewing station. Yes, that's not a typo. You need a tea set.
• You need a saddle rack to craft a revolver but there are no horses or other mounts in the game.
• Maybe they are trying to give everything a purpose, but really for people who like decorating their house, decorations are their own purpose and don't need to be stupidly linked to other things.

-1 Unbelievably clunky system of crafting stations and recipes

• Recipes and stations are basically quest locked.
• Separate furnishings ("augmentations") are required to be nearby in order for some recipes to show up.
• It's hard to tell whether the recipe is not showing up at your workstation because the required furnishing is not nearby, or because you don't have the recipe.
• There is a limit to how many furnishings can apply at one time, so it might also be that some furnishings are not being applied because your workstation has exceeded the limit. The current "solution" is twofold:
• Move some augmentations out of the way.
• Except that some augmentations affect more than one type of workstation, so if you want it for one but can't have it nearby for another because you're over limit there, then it's a new complication requiring a new workaround.
• Try picking up and putting down an augmentation then log in and out. That appears to make the last augmentation you put down register at the stations.
• But that first requires you know which ones to move and which ones you need, which is not so simple because...
• The wording at the workstation does not match the name of the furnishing. You might have a "martial' augment, but which augmentation provided that? You have to flip through the various menus until you find one that shows you the correspondence.
• -1 Some augmentations provide buffs to the crafting station, reducing crafting time or improving stats on crafted items.
• But this is really not documented anywhere. You have to use trial and error to discover them by putting down an augmentation and inspecting each station to see if it received a buff.
• The name of the buff does not correspond to the augmentation, which in turn might not be seemingly related to a crafting station. For example, the "Pack Leader" buff is provided by a "Simple Drinking Horn" and affects a Sewing Machine. You can get also get an identical non-stacking buff from a "Shield".
• Because of the augmentation limit, putting down a new augmentation too close to an existing workstation that you maybe didn't intend to affect might cause that new augmentation to apply and in turn remove the effect of another augmentation. But which workstation did it happen to? Which augmentation got bumped?

-1 You can just buy almost everything

• The merchants from which you need to buy blueprints also sell relevant materials, sometimes even basic materials but which you can't get in the current Biome.
• "Money" (Essence) can be gotten by Extracting it from virtually any item, destroying that item in the process. So you can just go around collecting shrubs for Plant Fibre and Sticks, extracting the lot of it, and then just buying all the materials you can't be bothered to gather, such as from killing critters.
• Some items will require
• If the game needs this backup mechanic, then maybe it is too convoluted trying to harvest what you need.
• This can also lead to Real Money Transactions where "gold sellers" offer to sell players currency and access to Realms they cannot normally reach yet, in order to shortcut play.

+0 Graphics are decent

• Although initially they were terrible. Then a couple of days later there is a driver update, and suddenly they look great. Coincidence? Anyway if you find the graphics to be terrible, maybe check for a driver update.

+1 Survival needs are pretty light, so there's a focus on exploration

• You are not constantly on the lookout for food, water, and rest. It's pretty relaxed so that you can leave your home base on fairly extended excursions.
• -1 Carry weight limitations are really severe especially in the early game and even after you can craft your first small backpack. But you can recruit a non-playable character who doesn't seem to have weight limitations but instead inventory slot limits.
• -1 Long boring distances to travel but with no Fast Travel, Mounts, or Vehicles.
• It's easy to repair your gear and you don't need materials to do so. You just use "money" (basic Essence) which you can get literally by extracting any junk you pick up from the ground.
• Honestly these changes are really refreshing in a "survival" game and make it more like an action RPG. New World had a similar formula.
• You can further customize the game world with Minor Cards that can change mechanics, such as even further reducing the need for food and rest.

-0 No crafting from storage

• Although a lot of people have asked for this, really it is not as necessary as you think.
• The main reason is that once something is created, you don't really need materials to sustain them. If a building is damaged for example, you don't need materials to repair it. You just whack it with a "Hammer" tool and it recovers durability.

+1 Procedurally generated worlds

• It really remains to be seen how much variety you can discover, or whether you'll get bored after seeing the key mechanics.
• The "Bastilles" that you are directed to do are so trivial and fall into certain patterns that once you've done one of each, you'll have basically seen everything. Same with a lot of other Points of Interest.
• A lot of random world POIs like a ruined structure here and there are basically just places to get a small handout. Usually there's a bit of food there, your reward for getting close to have a look around.
• A big Realm means lots of travel to experience a lot of repetition along the way. You need to open another Realm to get some variety. Just how much variety you can get with the initial three Biomes is suspect, but the developers have said more Biomes will be on the way.

-1 Bad math. Despite the years in development and free labour from alpha and beta testers, really bizarre math persists.

• Example from very early in the game (still in the tutorial stage):
• The sole advantage to cooking with 5 berries over cooking with 2 berries is that (inexplicably) the result weighs considerably less.
• You can buy a four-pack of vials of water for 10 Essence from the merchant, and then Extract 40 Essence from them (10 from each bottle).
• Of course Early Access is the excuse for things that will need to be changed, but these are obvious situations that occur during the tutorial phase -- meaning every playtester would have encountered them.
• Later-game example: (UPDATE: Somewhat fixed in 0.1.1 with ratios that at least give you more harvest than is required to get seeds)
• Farming Wheat costs you more resources than you get back: It takes 5 Wheat to get 1 Wheat Seed but growing that Wheat Seed only lets you harvest 1 Wheat.
• Surely someone tried Farming and noticed something off about it? Allowing the ratios to persist means all the connected economics estimates become wrong. The longer this issue persists, the more fixes you will have in subsequently added interconnected systems.

-1 Some astoundingly bad decisions.

• E.g., The in-game "How to Play" used to have a straightforward table of contents listing the various topics and sub-topics.
• This was subsequently changed where the topics were represented by pictures and the titles removed.
• But the pictures did not correspond to the topics. And there weren't enough pictures so many topics shared the same pictures.
• So now instead of being able to read the table of contents at a glance, players have to mouse over each picture and read the tooltip for the topic.